Just Pick One!

Sometimes I think if I have to make one more choice I’m going to melt into a puddle of goo. Do I really have to know the best detergent to use? I’m tired of deciding which soda to drink so much so that I have started to drink some kind of instant fruit punch. It’s good but it turns my lips a very bright almost glow in the dark red. Like the red lipsticks used in the 1940’s. WOW! Not a good look for me.

There are more than a few times in daily life that unconscious choices are made. Should I try to out run the yellow light? No. Will that green sweater really run if I wash it with a load of white towels? Yes. Those are life’s little keep you on your toes choices. But what of the ones that have developed since say the drive up window slid open for the first time?

If you go to a fast food place you probably go to the same chain over and over. Most of the time we do and we know without much hoopla what we will tell the box what we want to eat. No problem. But what if you try something new. Okay not new. I mean a hamburger is a hamburger. Well you would think so. But hold on there my little chickadees.

Driving through a town we hadn’t been to for a while we noticed that the place we usually zipped through on our way to the next town we were going to had gone out of business and a new place was up and going just down the street. We are equal opportunity meat and bacon eaters so we decided to give it a try. This new place was not a place we have gone to in the past. Which is quite remarkable because we, unapologetically, are drive thru aficionados! Not too sure that is something you would want to put on your resume’.

Pull up to the huge plastic menu and immediately it hits you-the mountain of choices. Again, as I stated before a hamburger is a hamburger?? Apparently according to this menu there are like 22 ways to offer meat and bun. Or chicken and bun. Or even meat without a bun. Then the sides come into play. Not to mention the drinks. There is so much more to the noble question, “You want fries with that?” Oh my stars this place even offered two kinds of fries!

So after what seemed to be way too much time deciding, as noted by the little beep of a horn behind us, we just picked a couple of numbers and proceeded. I was so intrigued by that 10’ X 12’ menu that when I got home I googled the establishment to see just what all was offered. Wow! It seems that the fast food industry, like so many things of today, has grown into a beast of burden. I mean a double burger with four choices of cheese, hickory, maple or peppered bacon, all the usual trappings of lettuce etc., bar-b-que sauce, crunchy onions, and chilies, three types of buns and on and on. Followed by twelve, yes twelve choices of sides of fries, onions, salads and other fried goodies. Not to mention, but of course I will mention, at least 33 choices of drinks and shakes and coffees and the like. Then if you can still navigate you are offered an array of items to quell that sweet tooth. But just in case you are feeling a bit guilty about having too much you can skip the sweets and buy some fruit pieces which by the way come with no less than six different sugar laden dippers! I’m stuffed and all I did was read the menu!

So why have I shared this with you? It really isn’t about that experience of the drive through. What really started this revelation was the huge, no the HUGE stack of catalogs we seem to be getting as the season of giving gets closer. I was thinking that since the world is changing to on line shopping this would not be such a big deal anymore. But nope. The recycle bin at our post office is overflowing with Christmas offering. Just like that huge menu at the drive thru the catalog mountain that has been arriving for weeks now, is just as overwhelming.

But not quite as overwhelming as say—the soup isle in a major grocery store! Bet ya can’t pick just one!